Ilya Lenkovets is a Nizhny Novgorod media entrepreneur, owner of the Telegram channel "My Nizhny Novgorod" and, by his own description, the creator of the largest network of Nizhny Novgorod Telegram channels. His channel has the biggest city-wide audience: 216,073 subscribers as of September 2, 2026 — compared with roughly fifty-five thousand subscribers at the largest Nizhny Novgorod portal.
How the channel grew
In October 2023, when city publications first began talking about the channel, "My Nizhny Novgorod" had 87,000 subscribers [1]. Over three years the audience grew two and a half times.
The channel operates as an authorless news feed: incidents, city stories, announcements — fourteen posts a day. The owner's name does not appear on posts; it is known from press publications and from his own contact channel [1].
Advertising cases
The case turned out to be a precedent: it was the first fine ever issued to a Telegram channel in Russia under the advertising labeling law [2]. It was a Nizhny Novgorod channel that was fined, and federal news agencies covered the story.
On September 18, 2023, the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Federal Antimonopoly Service opened proceedings: between September 2 and 12, sixteen posts had been published in the channel without the "Advertisement" label [1] [3]. The owner faced a fine of up to two million rubles; the amount actually imposed was two thousand [1] [3].
On November 16 of the same year, Roskomnadzor for the Volga Federal District opened another case — over the absence of a special identifier on advertising messages; the amount there could have ranged from one hundred and sixty thousand to four hundred and sixty thousand rubles [3].
Lenkovets himself reacted to the proceedings calmly and commented on them in a podcast [1].
Why should I worry? They already came to me. Let the others worry.
What this means for the city
The channel's history shows how the city's media landscape has transformed over just a few years. The largest audience in Nizhny Novgorod has been built not by a licensed editorial team with a full staff, but by a single person running a network of channels — and he was the first to be inspected for compliance with advertising labeling rules, not the established outlets.
At the same time, people read such a feed differently than the subscriber count might suggest: with 216,000 subscribers, a post gets around nineteen thousand views — nine percent of the audience. For author-driven channels with a name on the cover, that share is three times higher.
Sources
- Nizhegorodskaya Pravda — The owner of the Telegram channel "My Nizhny Novgorod" comments on the fine for improper advertising, 18 October 2023 (archive)
- nn.rbc.ru — RBC Nizhny Novgorod — Nizhny Novgorod FAS Service fines a Telegram channel for advertising without labeling for the first time in Russia, 5 December 2023 (archive)
- adpass.ru — How the FAS and Roskomnadzor are taking on a Nizhny Novgorod Telegram blogger, 6 December 2023 (archive)